If the Edmonton Oilers make a trade with the New York Rangers, would anybody be surprised?

Admittedly, it’s been awhile, but when Glen Sather was the Oilers GM and Neil Smith was in the Rangers employ as general manager, they made one a week, it seemed.

Craig MacTavish, the current Oilers GM, was sent there for Todd Marchant.

Kevin Lowe, the current Oilers president of hockey ops, was sent there for Roman Oksiuta (let’s not ask how good he was).

Mark Messier, currently working as an advisor to MacTavish and Lowe, was sent there for Bernie Nicholls, Louie DeBrusk and Steve Rice.

Glenn Anderson wound up there, too, so did Esa Tikkanen. The list goes on and on.

So, no, I’m not surprised that Lowe and Messier were at Madison Square Garden Monday night to watch the Rangers fall 2-1 to the Anaheim Ducks. That’s the first thing I thought of when Lowe wasn’t around the team in Florida, where the Oilers play the Panthers Tuesday night. There were only two NHL games Monday and he wasn’t going to be in Winnipeg to watch the Jets and the Wings.

Lowe may have been doing double-duty as one of the Canadian Olympic team braintrust, watching Marc Staal on the Rangers blueline and forward buddies Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf on the Ducks, but make no mistake, Ales Hemsky is in play here if there’s an Oiler-Ranger trade that might come off, and Sather has always loved high-end young talent so you can bet he’s sniffing around Nail Yakupov, who might remind him of Pavel Bure, whom he once traded for and brought to Broadway at the end of his NHL career. Messier, meanwhile, knows the Rangers roster inside and out because he used to work for Sather before leaving the club to attend to the construction of that massive indoor hockey rink complex at an armoury in New York. He’s been on an Oilers charter at least once this season so you know he’s back with his old team.

Oilers’ MacTavish won’t trade his big guns–Taylor Hall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins or Jordan Eberle–but the door might be slightly ajar for Yakupov who is having a miserable offensive second NHL season after a fine 17-goal rookie year. But Hemsky is almost surely being shopped by the 3-10-2 Oilers who need to get bigger and better defensively, and certainly Rangers’ coach Alain Vigneault, formerly running the Vancouver Canucks’ bench, would have seen lots of Hemsky over the past seven or eight years. And, it’s no secret the Rangers can’t score (26 goals in 14 games) and they sorely miss the concussed Rick Nash on the wing, and Hemsky can put up points, as long as he stays healthy.

His $5 million salary is definitely an impediment to any team taking him on but the Oilers would have to take salary back, or maybe they could pick up some of the right-winger’s wage. When Thomas Vanek was dealt to the New York Rangers, the Sabres agreed to pay close to 20 percent of his $7.1 million cap hit..

Who would the Oilers be looking at in New York. Leftwinger /centre Chris Kreider’s name immediately comes to mind, although since being recalled from the minors six games ago, he may be their best forward. They may have absolutely no interest in dealing a player with his size and skill but I’m sure the Oilers have asked about him. He fell out of favour there after a fine playoff in 2012 when he left Boston College, and only had two goals and three points in 28 NHL games last year. But he’s 6’3″ and 230 pounds and he can really skate. He played 19 minutes in the Rangers loss to the Ducks Monday.

He’s what the Oilers need–a winger with size and the speed to keep up, and he’s only 22. He’s in the last year of his entry-level contract at an $800,000 cap hit. The Oilers have long liked defenceman Michael Del Zotto, too. He had his best game of the season against the Ducks. He makes $2.55 million and is a restricted free-agent after this season.

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